Good afternoon everyone on Friday 23rd April. The weekend is almost upon us and a new version of the blog has already landed. The Friday blog will now be called Top Ten on Friday and feature the most recent Top Ten list of places in Italy. Last week I put together the Top Ten Piazzas in Italy list and the week before that it was the Top Ten Cities in Italy. 

For those of you that are interested in the latest pandemic facts and figures, they are kept up to date every day on the home page with a bulletin put out every late afternoon/early evening once the new data has been announced. The regular blog will be back as usual on Monday with the Coronavirus updates continuing over the weekend. One update I will announce here though is that the R rate has just gone down a bit further: it's now 0.81 and crucially lower than one. 

So what's today's Top Ten I hear you ask? Ok, maybe I didn't hear that at all but I'm going to tell you anyway. It's the Top Ten Italian Islands. In many ways this was an easy list for me to put together as I've personally visited more than 60 Italian islands but narrowing it down to just ten was tricky and a little bit heart-wrenching. I have done it now though and I'm fine so don't worry. 

I'll leave you with a few teasers as to which islands may have made the list and you can find the full article at the Top Ten Italian Islands link. By the way, one of the islands in the photos below didn't make the list - "but which one?" and "why ever not?" I speculatively hear you ask again. All is revealed on the website. 

Have a great weekend, let me know what you think of the list and I'll be back on Monday.

Ciao 

Good morning on Thursday 22nd April. Once upon a time there was a thing called a road map that used to help you navigate from one place to the next. So long and forgotten is the humble road map that it now gets used as a metaphor for the way out of the pandemic. It even has an Italian version these days although it's slightly different: they call it "La Road Map". It might take you a while to get your lips around that tricky new phrase and its pronunciation so while you're doing that, let me explain why it's relevant today. 

As of Monday 26th April "La Road Map" will lead us out of the pandemic and into the land of milk and honey otherwise known as Italy. I've just carried out an extensive update of the new restrictions on the home page but the main bullet points are as follows:

• 26th April - 1st June: overnight curfew to remain in place between 22:00 and 05:00
• 26th April onwards: movement between regions in the yellow zones will be permitted
• 26th April onwards: movement between all regions will be permitted to holders of a green certificate proving any of full vaccination, previous infection and recovery or negative test within the last 48 hours
• 15th May onwards: swimming pools can reopen in yellow zones
• 1st June onwards: restaurants able to serve meals indoors and outdoors in yellow zones
• Regions in the yellow zones to be published in the next few days
• As many as 14 of the 20 regions are expected to enter the yellow zone as of Monday 26th April
• Zones will be revised and updated on a weekly basis depending on virus situation in each region

There are a number of other restrictions to be eased detailed on the home page but those above are the most relevant for tourism as it stands. Note the green certificate which allows you to travel freely between regions. Of course you'll first need to be able to leave your country for a holiday and you probably won't want to quarantine when you get back, and we're a little way off some relevant announcements on that from the likes of the UK and the US. We're getting there though, bit by bit. 

Yesterday in Italy there were 13,844 new cases of Covid 19 confirmed which was a nice drop on the previous Wednesday of more than two thousand. The seven day comparison shows an overall reduction of 12% which has grown a bit from the previous day's 8%. 

In other news, a man in the city of Catanzaro in Calabria has been accused of drawing a salary from a local hospital for the last 15 years despite never having set foot in the building. The 67 year old earned in the region of €538,000 during that time and has been dubbed the "king of absentees", the kind of royal title you just don't want. The hospital has been inundated with new applications for jobs in the last few days since the news broke. 

I won't dwell on the specifics of the weather today; suffice to say it's a bit rubbish but it should be getting better by the weekend, said no weatherman, ever. 

Today's photos come from Puglia and the wonderful hill town of Ostuni. Known as La Città Bianca, the white city sparkles from its perch across three hills a few kilometres inland of the Adriatic Coast. It takes its name from the whitewashed walls which line the narrow streets in the town's centro storico. It's one of the most internationally-visited towns in Puglia and has an appropriate number of bars and restaurants to suit those needs, particularly at night when it's a favourite spot for locals and tourists alike. 

Ostuni sits at the point where the trull houses of the Valle d'Itria give way to the golden beaches of the Salento. Within easy reach of Ostuni are the likes of Alberobello, Cisternino and Locorotondo, all of which are shrines to the trulli homes while nearby beaches include Costa Merlata and those of the seaside town of Polignano a Mare. 

I'll leave you with a few images of Ostuni and the surrounding area for now and I'll be back with more tomorrow, including a list of Top Ten Italian Islands. 

​Buona giornata

Good morning on Wednesday 21st April, the morning after the night before when two huge news stories with international ramifications broke. Almost at the same time as Derek Chauvin was being found guilty for the murder of George Floyd, the six breakaway English teams that tried to form a European Super League held their hands up and said mea culpa. Italian team Inter Milan are the latest to turn their backs on the proposed competition although Juventus and AC Milan appear to be standing their ground for the time being.

The main pandemic news is that Italy will today distribute the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine around the regions as part of its rollout program. The new vaccine will boost supplies in the country and the fact that only one shot of it is required means more people will be fully vaccinated that bit sooner. 

Yesterday in Italy there were 12,074 new cases of Covid 19, a reduction of just over a thousand from the previous Tuesday. A numerical trend has emerged over the last few days showing something like a 10% reduction of case numbers from the previous week. With a greater number of people vaccinated every day (321,290 yesterday), and the warmer weather just around the corner, there's great hope that the case numbers will start to fall at a faster rate. 

We're still not quite there yet with the weather; most of the country will enjoy long periods of sunshine today but temperatures are still down on the seasonal average. From north to south, Milan and Rome will reach no higher than 14° Celsius today, while Naples at 16° C and Palermo at 18° will show a slight increase the further south you are. The weekend should see the start of more seasonal temperatures. 

Today's photos come from Viterbo; this is the capital of the eponymous province which was once home to the Popes. Numerous pontiffs were elected at Viterbo's Palazzo dei Papi and the town can boast a series of beautiful Renaissance palazzi and historic piazzas. Viterbo is situated at the northern end of Lazio, close to the border with Tuscany and the sense of history hangs in the air in the rolling hills that surround the town.

The area was once known as Tuscia and was the centre of the Etruscan civilisation until those nasty old Romans came along and conquered them. There are dozens of towns and archaeological sites in the area which lay testament to the Etruscan heritage: the two necropoli at Tarquinia and Cerveteri are fascinating UNESCO World Heritage Sites while Etruscan towns like Tuscania and Cività di Bagnoregio offer their own unique glimpses into the past. 

I'll leave you for today with some images of Viterbo and the surrounding area. I'll be back with more tomorrow. 

Buona giornata.

Good morning on Tuesday 20th April. Football continues to hog the headlines in Italy with lots more conjecture about the planned breakaway league while more meetings are planned to combat the Coronavirus pandemic. 

The Italian government and the different regions will decide on the best way to ease the current measures today and it is hoped that by Monday next week, twelve regions will be able to enter the yellow zone of reduced restrictions. The really big change there is that in the yellow zones it will be possible to move between regions; unless of course they're really crafty and put yellow regions next to red ones which would be like a really big game of Connect 4!

Yesterday in Italy there were 8,864 new cases of Covid-19, a small drop on the same day from the previous week and in general things are heading in the right direction. For the first time in a long time the number of cases in the previous seven days dipped below 100,000 and the overall number of people currently infected dropped below half a million. The remaining testing and vaccination stats are all on the home page. 

As the rest of the news today is mainly political or in the case of the football, international, I'm going to skip straight on to the weather. Rome was covered in a blanket of white yesterday after a fierce hailstorm and this is very much indicative of the unseasonal conditions we're currently experiencing. It will at least be sunny today though with Catania the warmest at 17° Celsius and Turin up to the dizzy heights of 9° C.

Today's photos come from Tuscany and a series of hill towns just to the north of Siena. The most famous of all the Tuscan hill towns is San Gimignano, dubbed the Medieval Manhattan. It earned that moniker for its skyline of medieval towers of which there are 14, although there were once 72. San Gimignano is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, largely for retaining its historic appearance. One of the major sights in the town is its main church: the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta with its incredible collection of frescoes and there are numerous other churches around the town that can boast similar mastery of the art form. 

Despite the town being relatively small and the main sights all being within a short walk of each other, you do still need a full day to see everything. In fact there's a good deal more to see in the local area with nearby towns including Volterra, Colle di Val d'Elsa and Monteriggioni. San Gimignano is a popular day-trip from Siena which is a 45 minute drive away. 

That's all from me today, I'll be back with more tomorrow.

​Ciao.